Comedian Demetri Martin on death, 'Dean' and drawing

Sunday

May 28, 2017 at 12:01 AMMay 28, 2017 at 11:08 AM

Dana Barbuto The Patriot Ledger

CAMBRIDGE - It takes comedian-author-actor-illustrator – and so many more hyphens – Demetri Martin about 20 seconds to sketch a picture of Ice Bear, the character he voices on Cartoon Network’s “We Bare Bears.”

“I’m not that good at drawing bears. It looks like a mouse,” Martin said, adding another pen stroke. “OK, it’s kinda like Ice Bear now.” Martin is being modest – it’s an exact likeness. He caps off the impromptu drawing of my son’s favorite character with a message: “Dominic, Ice Bear Says Hi.”

Always referring to himself in the third person, Ice Bear is the chillest of the show’s three talking-bear brothers, and Martin voices the character with the same kind of gentle deadpan one-liners that are typical of his eclectic brand of comedy.

Familiar as a stand-up performer, a correspondent on “The Daily Show” and the host of his own Comedy Central show, Martin was in Boston to promote his semi-serious directorial debut, “Dean,” opening June 2. In it, he plays the title character, a Brooklyn illustrator unable to come to terms with the recent death of his mother. Oscar-winner Kevin Kline plays Dean’s father, who’s a little farther along in the grieving process. Dean becomes even more unhinged when Dad decides to sell the family’s home and start to date.

“I find drawing so relaxing,” Martin, 44, said. “I liked drawing as a kid, but I’m not an artist. That’s how I drew when I was 13. And then I stopped drawing and started again when I was in my 20s.”

While in Boston, Martin, 44, performed a pair of comedy shows at the Wilbur Theater and played host to a screening of “Dean.” In addition to directing and starring in the movie, Martin also wrote and produced, earning the Founder’s Prize at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival for best American feature film.

“Dean” has Martin’s stamp all over it, with his rudimentary sketches helping to amplify the narrative. In the fall, Martin’s third book, “If It’s Not Funny It’s Art,” featuring the original drawings from “Dean,” will be published by Hachette. The movie’s themes of grief and loss spilled straight from the heart. His father, a Greek Orthodox priest who studied at the seminary in Brookline, died from kidney cancer when Martin was a junior at Yale in 1993.

“I thought if I’m going to make a movie, then I’m going to tell a personal story,” Martin said during a conversation at the Sheraton Commander Hotel in Cambridge. “And one thing I have experience with is loss, so that’s what I put in there. Except, I killed off my mother instead of my father.” he adds in his trademark deadpan.

Martin’s acting resume includes a starring role in Ang Lee’s “Taking Woodstock,” and parts in Lake Bell’s underrated comedy “In a World” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion.” He also played unpredictable tech mogul Ellis Hightower on the Showtime comedy “House of Lies,” and written for “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.” In between, he’s published a humor book and a collection of illustrations, both cracking The New York Times best-seller list.

Not too shabby for a guy who dissed Harvard Law School to follow a girl to NYU (they later broke up), where he dropped out after a year to pursue comedy. He laughs thinking back on that chaotic time

“Right off the cliff I went,” Martin said. “It was the first time in my life that everyone was disappointed. My aunts, my uncles, the whole Greek clan. Everyone was always proud of me ... they thought I was going to be a senator. The first strike was I turned down Harvard Law. I wanted to go there, of course, who doesn’t want to go there, the sweatshirts are amazing.”

Martin flipped his family’s disappointment around. “Disapproval is kind of a freedom,” he said. “By the time, I decided I wanted to be a comedian – I could have said I was going to be a poet or dancer or something – they were already disappointed so it didn’t matter. So it frees you in a weird way and you can do whatever you want. I’m 20 years in now, so it’s kind of accepted, but for a while it did not compute for them.”

Though Martin can “fake it in like four different things,” stand-up is where he’s at home. “But I’m getting tired of the traveling. It’s hard, especially now that I have kids,” said Martin, who has a son, 3, and infant daughter with wife, Rachael Beame. “I miss home. I’m in my 40s and sometimes I feel hungover and I haven’t even had anything to drink.”

Martin shies away from revealing too much personal stuff in his stand-up routines. “I’m not really in step with a lot of the folks in comedy who share everything. I’m more private.”

His style is more among the lines of his comedic influences – one-liner genius Steven Wright, Gary Larson, the creator of The Farr Side, and his late father. “My dad was actually pretty funny,” Martin said. His stand-up act is subtle, joke-based comedy. For example: “The worst time to have a heart attack is during a game of charades”; or “I think it’s interesting that cologne rhymes with alone”; or “I used to play sports, then I realized you can buy trophies. Now I’m good at everything.” Martin also uses simple strumming on a guitar as background music for his jokes.

“I like the process of coming up with a joke and writing a joke that doesn’t have that many words in it. There’s something very artistic about it for me,” Martin said.

“Dean” also stars Gillian Jacobs, Reid Scott, Mary Steenburgen and Rory Scovel. Going all-in with “Dean” helped him process his father’s death, but other anxieties arose. Martin admits he worried about balancing the comedy and drama. He also said he was afraid to fail.

“There’s a lot of danger in being the writer, director and putting your face up there because it’s all my fault if it goes wrong,” he said. “I can’t hide. I can’t blame it on anybody, but when it does connect with somebody it’s definitely validating in a special way that is different from stand-up. With stand-up, you either get the laugh or you don’t. The crowd is telling you right away. With a movie, you’re in a vacuum and you don’t know if this going to work, or is it too sad or too slow. It’s just like guesswork and when somebody does like it, you’re like ‘Cool, I’m on the right track.’”

Originally Martin called the film “The First Thing You Never Get Over.” “You never totally get over loss, you just get to a place where it’s just part of you,” he said. That’s Dean’s journey.

Martin recalls being on edge during the film’s premiere. “When the credits rolled and it said ‘Illustrations by Demetri Martin,’ people clapped. It got me so choked up... the fact that people appreciated them was surprisingly moving to me because it was so personal.”

Next up for Martin is a Netflix special he’ll record in December; and “We Bare Bears” will likely be back for a fourth season.

“That’s been a nice gig,” he said. “They record it not very far from my house in California. I go once or twice a week and record a bunch of episodes. It has a sweetness to it that I love. My 3-year-old doesn’t watch much stuff yet because he’s so young, but I’ll go to him ‘Ice Bear says good night,’ and he laughs. He has this little plush toy of Ice Bear that he sleeps with because he figured out it’s my voice on the show.”

Dana Barbuto may be reached at dbarbuto@ledger.com or follow her on Twitter @dbarbuto_Ledger.